Witching Hour
by Sigmu
Summary: Amelia, daughter of Apple and Raven, comes into her adult witch powers. WARNING: Yuri/Lesbian themes will make more sense if you have already read my fix The True Love Loophole.


A/n: Fair Warning! This will make a whole lot more sense if you read my other story The True Love Loophole since this is a spinoff off of that! I hope you all enjoy!

XXX

Storm rumbled under the skin, lightning arcing across bone making joints twitch, twitch, twitch in unused anticipation, pupils blown wide, lungs drawing air rapidly, feeling the beat of the heart drumming against a cage of bone, itching for something, longing to do something…

"Looks like it's about that time for Amelia." Raven observed calmly, the older witch watching her eldest daughter fidget here and there, never able to stay still (even more than usual), and darting her gaze about her surroundings agitatedly.

"About what time?" Apple asked hefting the five-month-old up from the stroller in order to stand beside her wife and eye their oldest curiously. "Does it have anything to do with the reason why Amelia is acting so twitchy?" The blonde asks already having an intuitive feeling from the magical string that linked her and Raven together that it probably did.

"She's thirteen which is about the time when her adult powers will be coming through." Raven nodded in acknowledgment to the other woman's guess a slight glint of approval crossing her loving gaze when she briefly glanced at Apple. "For witches and warlocks, when we reach the age of thirteen harvests it marks us as an official witch, not a witchling in both law and in biological makeup, it is when we shed the mostly instinctual protective shell of our infant powers and grow into our adult potentials. Her powers at the moment are… well I suppose that the best word to describe it would be that they are in metamorphosis, much like a caterpillar spinning a cocoon in order to turn into a butterfly, right now she is in that transitional stage."

"So… it's perfectly normal for her to be completely blitzed out and staring at trees?" Apple peered at her daughter slightly worried as the girl continued to stare, eyes wide, pupils blown, and twitching every so often at what apparently seemed like nothing and everything at the same time, though it was more likely to be mostly the former since Amelia wasn't acknowledging the existence of her younger sister Elenore (Millie King-Queen-White II, a reserved yet quietly daring seven-almost-eight-year-old who resembled her great-grandmother almost to a T in appearance and often followed Amelia around and watched with stoic glee as her doting older sibling pulled off yet another crazy stunt (like sliding down the stair banisters while standing up and backwards), or when she was not watching Amelia, Elenore was the brains behind most of the trouble that her and her friends managed to get up to (like sliding down the stair banisters while wearing helmets and having cushions waiting at the end of the ride) or her younger by a few months brother Yuki Wu (an orphaned human-sea serpent hybrid that Amelia had dragged home one day, shouting at the top of her lungs as she half carried the unconscious boy to her parents, returning from spending her day out at the beach with friends while they had all been on vacation and Raven had been pregnant with the twins).

"Oh yeah it's normal." Raven assured. "Did I ever tell you about the time I had an unintentional staring contest with a wild dragon and Maddie had to swoop in and save me because I was so far gone into my transformation?"

" _You what?_ " Apple cast her wife a startled look.

"Yes, apparently the beast was so disgruntled that it had lost the contest that it never heard Maddie clamor up a tree and leap at it until it was already too late and Maddie had managed to knock the creature out cold." Raven continued, her eyes glazing over at the memory of Maddie shaking her shoulders and attempting to get enough of Raven's awareness back into herself to tell Raven the good news regarding the fact that they were both still alive and that Raven had beaten a dragon at one of their best games (because dragons in the wild learned from an early age to stare down trespassers to make them think twice about causing trouble when all the dragon really wants to do is nap in peace).

"…And the teachers at the elementary and junior high school wonder why our children are on the crazy side of the spectrum…" Apple muttered.

"To be fair all the children of our former classmates are pretty wild." Raven pointed out. "Much more wild than we ever were at any rate."

Apple sighed and nodded in agreement because it was true, painfully, hilariously, but mostly terrifyingly true.

"Lady Raven may I speak with you and Lady Apple about Amelia? Elenore assures me that this is probably normal for a witch of her age but I would be very grateful if you could please clarify?" Yuki called as he ran over, his foreign oval eyes as wide as they could go, to the two women.

The boy's birth parents had raised him to be extremely polite and subservient, especially to what were defined in his culture to be his "betters", if his parents had not been killed by their master and magistrate's enemies (which had turned out to have been a combined effort done by the deceased magistrate's mistress, a team of undersea assassins, and the royal butler) then he would have eventually succeeded his parents and become a loyal servant to the magistrate.

As it was, even after they had done their part to help the authorities solve the affair of a mass murder in international waters, brought his parent's and master's killers to justice, and adopted him it never quite seeped in that it meant that he was royalty now and had a very good chance (if he wanted it) to inherit the throne since Amelia from the age of three was dead set on not becoming the next ruler and it was obvious that was not going to change any time soon, or even become a royal lord at all. Sure he recognized them all as family and he seemed to grow to love them all immensely in the three years he has been with them, but his adopted parents had the suspicion that he had it in his head that he was either going to end up working for Amelia in whatever she decided to do with her life, or that they were going to have him marry her as her royal concubine or something like that (which would make sense to him since his human mother was the bastard child to a minor lord from his maternal homeland and she was given as a gift to the sea magistrate who then gifted her to his favored servant as a foreign trophy wife).

Raven highly doubted at this point that Amelia was going to start feeling romantic feelings towards anyone, ever, or at least any time soon though Apple still held out hope in the way that mothers do when they see their little children grow up before their eyes and they start to worry that when their adolescent children run off with friends to play in the secluded woods that it may or may not lead to an accidental pregnancy or a formal declaration that this other royal's child was to become their prince/princess when they grew up to the age where the fairytale can happen and they can get married.

When Apple had mentioned such a thing to Raven the witch had given the blonde a very long look before declaring that she'd never understand the way that Apple was raised and tactfully did not inform her wife of the fact that most of the past Evil Queens never married. Or even knew who the father was. Children just happened either from a night of fun, or from adoption, or in more recent centuries an organized planned trip to the fertility clinic.

"Yes, your adopted mother was just telling me all about it." Apple confirmed sharing a look of mutual understanding with the boy who was the only other person in the current family of eight that was not a witch by birth and therefore did not completely understand all of the rest of the family's witchy ways. "Apparently this will happen to every witch at the age of thirteen."

"See Yuki, I told you I knew what was off about her." Elenore stated authoritatively and with all the grace of a Snow White princess (it was generally suspected that Elenore would eventually ascend to the throne if Yuki did not rise up to take the position). "There is little need to worry about Amelia, nothing too bad has ever gotten to her or in her way, that's just how she is." The dark-haired little girl stated with the stoic pride of a young youth who has an idol to look up to as well as live with (something that Amelia takes very seriously since, even as crazy as she tended to be most of the time, she was still the kind of older sibling who simultaneously wanted to keep her siblings safe from pretty much everything in the entire world while also craving her own sense of privacy to the point where she territorially hid most of the stuff that she did not want the younger siblings to "borrow" and would take to hiding in the oddest places just to get a moment of unobserved peace, since complaining about needing some privacy to her parents was pretty ridiculous when you lived in a castle or palace depending on the season and therefore had enough room to outrun and out hide everybody when the mood or need struck).

"Yes… Amelia certainly seems to think so too." Yuki acknowledged slowly nodding his head (he was currently in his humanoid form), having been rather close to what felt like a heart attack far too many times whenever he had been witness to one of Amelia's stunts or adventures (he even managed to pass out cold from sheer horror when Amelia had somehow managed to get completely covered in red finger-paints and white flour that one time she was trying to get away from Elenore and the twins and ended up falling through the wrong window and into the wrong storage cabinet (the twins being June and Kiki who were identical and who took the art of stoicism to a whole new level and were under the impression most of the time that they were in fact one entity, they were a fair bit more telepathic than most witches and therefore rarely felt the need to speak, if they wanted something they merely thought at you very strong suggestions of what you should give them, suffice to say their parents only left them unsupervised in other people's company _only_ if they _knew_ that those other people were strong enough mentally not to be swayed by their attempts at mind tricks).

Apple turned to Raven. "How will we know when she's come into her adult powers?"

Raven shrugged. "Oh it's a little different with each individual witch and the amount of power that they hold inside of themselves, it could be anywhere from her quietly glowing and coming back into awareness to a great big show of light, magic, and power."

"…Raven, darling, dearest beloved, how many of your forbearers ever experienced a quiet transition from child to adult magical power? And what happened to the area around them when they did transition." Apple asked her wife pointedly.

Raven blinked for a moment before realization struck her and she paled considerably.

"We are going to have to keep a close eye on her." Raven stated nervously.

"Um mama… where did sissy go?" Elenore was looking behind her in that bewildered way small children do when things suddenly go missing to the empty patch of lawn where Amelia used to be standing and staring unseeingly at trees.

"Kiiiii GAH!" Complained Catherina the five-month-old baby when the shocked silence lasted too long for her liking.

XXX

There was a thread, a whisper, a tug, a call to wander closer, wisps of things, of magic and of memory, beckoned her to come, she could feel it in the blood flowing deep in her bones. It was like a maternal relative calling her inside for tea and stories around the cauldron after spending all morning running around the yard. It was familiar and warm and it was like something that Amelia felt that she had always sort of known even when she had never really experienced it, at least not in the context of the physical world since the maternal relative in question was long dead and the other two relatives who told stories to her in that special way that only Grimm's could, had never done so around a witch's cauldron.

Something was calling to her through the stunned haze of having everything filling her numerous senses in too-clear focus to have hope to actually focus on anything at all, it was familiar in a warm sort of way even though she had never personally met the one who was calling to her.

In a matter of hours, or was it minutes? Seconds? Time in the linear sense was rather difficult to grasp at the moment that was not a moment… or was it a moment at all? Amelia had wandered as close to the feeling as she could get, as she was capable of getting since the feeling was both very close and so very far away in that matter that only happened when the person in question was no longer around to be close to, so she stopped, the storm brewing inside of herself far too turbulent with the sheer amount of sensations to tell her where exactly she was, but she had just enough sense to stand still, and wait.

Deftly her mind was aware of someone who was very faint in existence settling their hands upon her shoulders while the encompassing essence of her great-grandfather gently took her limp arms and helped her hold them up until her body caught up with her mind just enough to grasp the handle of the sword that she had just been given.

And that's when the storm inside of her seemed to shift and begin clicking into place the metal in her hands thrumming almost as if in song and striking a chord inside of herself that nearly sounded as though the object were convinced, as much as objects outside of Wonderland could be convinced of anything, that she was the person it was waiting for.

And in some strange way Amelia felt as though she were almost sort of waiting for the sword too, a part of her, hidden deep down from the first few days of her birth and existence, always left in a wondering sort of state whether or not she'd ever be near something that felt very much like this sword again, even though she could just as easily live without it and still be perfectly fine.

But somewhere, deep down where her magic lay she always wondered.

She'd have to ask Brooke Page the narrator about this, Amelia made a note to herself as she slowly began to become more aware of the world in the normal sort of way, she had a suspicion that this was one of those things that held the danger of sneaking up on people later in life in the middle of some drama if she weren't careful about it, Amelia as a rule always liked to know exactly where, when, and how she stood with everything magic and personally related to her existence, because not knowing or at least being particularly obtuse to where you stood in this dimension often held the danger of you being sucked into a story and Amelia preferred to follow her Grimm ancestry as well as her mother Raven's rebellious will and merely observe or create stories while living her life as she darn well pleased.

Plus, Brooke was always the best at telling spoilers to things… when she could get away with it from the other, exasperated narrators.

In the span of a few blinks Amelia came to realize that she was inside the eye of a vortex of her own swirling magic, a bright white glow with the faint softer glowing hints of almost candle-lit words flying past in an exciting and indecipherable manner.

"Grandfather?" The girl yelped out suddenly feeling very surprised and very worried.

"Relax, nothing bad is happening, you are doing just fine, there is nothing to be worried about so don't fret." Her great-grandfather assured in his soothing gruff voice.

"What's going on?" Amelia looked around her in complete bafflement trying to squint in order to see past the magic. "Come to think of it; where am I? the last thing I remember… er the last thing I remember clearly is being on our way coming home after we celebrated the defeat of the last Evil Queen's curses in the kingdom of Wick… it gets progressively odd after that though…"

"You've wandered into the top floor of the mausoleum dear. You've been slowly coming into your adult powers for the past few days, memory confusion is very common." Milton Grimm assured his great-granddaughter matter-of-fact.

"That's right, I turned thirteen a few days ago…" Amelia murmured, relaxing considerably as the pieces of the past few days clicked into place in her mind. "So how long until the giant cyclone of magic goes away? I don't want to accidentally light the bushes in a pink fire that doesn't actually burn anything but grows bigger if you put water on it like when cousin May-Dragon went through this!" It had been quite the memorable occasion from what Amelia had gathered when her cousin had recounted the event to Amelia back at the celebration in Wick, though now the young witch realized somewhat bemusedly that her cousin May-Dragon had in fact been warning her because that had been the day Amelia was going to actually turn thirteen (her half-birthday still counted as a birthday but for a witch the actual date of your birth tended to eclipse things in a practical sort of way whether you wanted it or not).

"The sword should help prevent any unwanted magic phenomenon from appearing, just be sure not to think about anything specific, like maybe having the water in the kettle suddenly boiling or the stubborn lid of the jar of chocolate syrup for the biscuits suddenly opening..."

There was a high-pitched hiss from said kettle and a metallic pop from the lid of a jar popping off a second after the man spoke.

"Grandfather!" Amelia laughed, the whirl of magic slowing down and thinning to the point where Amelia felt safe enough to begin slowly walking towards the tea table where her great-grandfather could often be found when she or one of her mother's (mostly her Mama-Raven who often fretted that the man would get depressed or would neglect his health being cooped up most of the time in what was the King family crypt) came to visit.

The official story was that Mama-Raven's father, the Good King, had a man servant who had once been close friends with the great Elenore Queen and had helped raise Raven from the very day they had found her on the front door stoop that freezing cold day on Winter Solstice, but he had taken ill from a curse placed upon him by the Evil Queen herself just before The woman had been locked away in the mirror dimension, his condition worsening considerably when the Evil Queen had broken loose. It soon got to the point where the Good King and his daughter were forced to house the ailing man within the brightly lit protective spelled walls and glass of the King family tombs to save the dear old servant's life.

Amelia knew that this was a lie, Brooke had told her as such when she was very young, but still old enough to grasp at the concept that her parents and family were keeping up the lie to both protect her biological grandfather, and Amelia and her siblings, that it was not an easy decision and it pained her Mama-Raven greatly not to be able to publically claim her grandfather as family or for great-uncle Giles to say that he was visiting his ill friend and not his imprisoned brother.

Amelia at least knew and her great-grandfather and great-uncle knew she knew (she did not know how but they did) and it was precious because it was their little secret and since she was more King and Grimm than White or Queen it was as her auntie Blondie would say; just right for them.

They were Grimm's after all, it was the type of things that they tended to do.

"Were you there when grandmother Elenore came into her adult powers?" Amelia asked, feeling both new and perfectly the same all at once.

"Sit down and I'll tell you all about it, I'm certain that your mothers will come around eventually in search of you." Milton predicted, glancing at something just behind Amelia's left shoulder, but when the girl turned to look, like always the ghost of her great-grandmother vanished before she could catch a glimpse of the specter.

Milton merely chuckled at his Great-granddaughter's antics and began telling the girl the story of how the love of his life, Elenore Queen, came into her adult powers and all the havoc that resulted from it while Amelia gently set her new sword aside to ask more about later, when her mother's managed to find her, feeling perfectly content with having tea and biscuits while listening to her great-grandfather tell stories.

She may have changed inside, grown that much more towards becoming an adult, and it was scary indeed, but she would never be too old for stories, and nothing was more comforting to a Queen witch going through great amounts of change than a little normalcy, some tea, and a good story.


End file.
